SMOKE AND FUMES The GCC, moreover, released a report accusing Santer and other IPCC scientists of revising the chapter, without authorization—despite the fact that the report hadn’t yet been published.138 This strategy of attacking scientists individually—echoing the experience of Arie Haagen-Smit in the fight over smog—presaged future attacks on scientists, such as Michael E. Mann, the lead author of the third IPCC report.139 The stark dichotomy between the oil industry’s internal understanding of climate change and its public communications on climate science and climate policy is manifest in an internal “Global Climate Science Communications Plan” prepared by the American Petroleum Institute in 1998. The plan, first brought to light by the Union of Concerned Scientists in 2007, outlined the industry’s goals and strategies for engaging in the climate debate in the future.140 It defined a successful industry campaign on climate change in the following language. “Victory Will Be Achieved When… Average citizens ‘understand’ (recognize) uncertainties in climate science; recognition of uncertainties becomes part of the ‘conventional wisdom,’” and “[t]hose promoting the Kyoto treaty on the basis of extant science appear to be out of touch with reality.”141 The Oil Industry Continued to Fund and Promote Climate Misinformation and to Oppose Climate Mitigation Actions Throughout the 2000s into the Current Decade In 2000, ExxonMobil published an op-ed series entitled “Global Climate Change,” which summarized the company’s views on the issue. In one of the four op-eds, called “Unsettled Science,” Exxon describes the science as inherently unsettled, questions whether changes in climate are due to human activities or natural variation, and suggests that uncertainties regarding climate impacts include positive uncertainties, for example about how much crop yields will increase and how much faster forests will grow.142 17 The op-ed ends by declaring that, “while some argue that the science debate is settled and governments should focus only on near-term policies—that is empty rhetoric.”143 Documents discovered via Freedom of Information Act requests demonstrate that from 2001 through 2012 Wei-Hock Soon, a scientist at the Smithsonian Institution, received more than $1.2 million in research funding from fossil fuel interests.144 Major funders of Soon’s work included ExxonMobil, API, the Charles Koch Foundation, and Southern Company.145 That research was touted as independent, and the Smithsonian was disallowed from disclosing the identity of the funders without their permission.146 As explained by the Union of Concerned Scientists, “Soon has written about many aspects of climate change but is best known for his work on the role of solar variability, research that has broadly overstated the role the sun plays in climate change and has been largely discredited by his scientific peers… Outcry from the climate science B OX 1 Coal and Climate Denial © Benita5/Pixabay While oil companies have been among the largest and most consistent funders of climate denial and misinformation efforts, they have not been alone. Like their colleagues in oil and gas, the coal industry has a long, extensively documented history in promoting climate misinformation and denial.150 In 1991, for example, the coal trade associations created the Information Council on the Environment, which orchestrated a national campaign publicly downplaying the risks of climate change.151 In 1998, the coal industry, through the Western Fuels Association, created “The Greening Earth Society” to promote the idea that rising levels of atmospheric CO2 would benefit humanity and the planet by accelerating plant growth. The Greening Earth Society (GCC) was only one among many climate front groups operated or funded by the Western Fuels Association.152 They were also a part of the Global Climate Coalition, discussed elsewhere in this section.153 Bankruptcy filings from three of the largest coal companies—Arch Coal, Alpha Natural Resources, and Peabody Energy—demonstrate that even after GCC was closed, these coal companies continued funding a network of “denier groups,” including the Heartland Institute, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Energy & Environmental Legal Institute, and the Free Market Environmental Law Clinic.154 In 2009, as the United States Congress was debating legislation designed to dramatically reduce greenhouse emissions nationwide, an alliance representing coal industry groups sent forged letters to members of Congress that falsely suggested several civil society groups opposed the legislation.155